


Us Invisibles

by orphan_account



Category: Best Song Ever - One Direction (Music Video)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcel had had better days. Set post-Best Song Ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Us Invisibles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [samsnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samsnow/gifts).



> Happy holidays, samsnow! 
> 
> Thanks to my beta for the hand-holding. <3

_Us Invisibles_

Marcel's ass was going numb. 

Well, to be fair, his ass had gone numb an hour ago. He'd been sitting in the same position for so long that he was kind of scared of trying to move, just in case his muscles had all locked up and he was stuck here forever, sitting on the floor of his office surrounded by the remains of his One Direction _Best Song Ever_ video pitch. Moving to the west coast for this job he hadn't even wanted all that much, just because of a girl, was precisely the worst decision he'd made recently. Particularly since after a couple of weeks she'd told him it wasn't ever going to work out, and had introduced Marcel to a very buff, tanned surfer dude called Nate, who Marcel suspected was already his replacement. 

He had had better days. 

In fact, he'd had better weeks. Better _months_. He'd devoted two whole weeks to preparing for this pitch, and all he'd got out of it was:

a) an up-close and personal relationship with his office floor,  
b) the sickening realization that he was going to get fired in the morning,  
c) a sleep-debt the size of Greenland, since he got home from work at practically midnight, and then started stress-baking muffins,  
d) two weeks of intense social, cultural, and historical research into the relevance of boy bands, and no way of getting any of those hours of his life back. 

The last one was the worst. The things he'd had to watch in the name of research! Songs with grammatically incorrect titles and boys in studded leather cycling shorts who then got their naked asses mopped with jello. For a start, that can't have been sanitary, and secondly, in Marcel's previous firm there was precisely no way on earth he'd still have had a job if he'd had to market something called _do what u like_. That said, his old job had been with a publishing company on the east coast, so it was hardly comparable to this place, where they tended to make commercials that involved women laughing at salad and making friends with yogurt. 

He'd spent a lot of time paying a lot of money for a liberal arts degree that focused primarily on the beat poets, and at no point during those four years at Oberlin had he ever considered the possibility that he would, one day, be paid to be enthusiastic about promoting a close and personal friendship with arugula. 

There was a healthy possibility that he was in the wrong job. 

Also terrible—and maybe even worse than just _terrible_ , since Marcel was a chronic over-achiever with some significant accompanying issues—he hated screwing up, and there really was no getting past it today: he'd screwed up. He'd really screwed up. 

Even worse than the realization that not only had their pitch been totally wrong and that the clients had hated it, was the knowledge that Marcel had less than zero idea about how to pitch anything better, because it turned out he had the music industry know-how of a musically-challenged goldfish. Or worse, a tone-deaf crab. Or a narwhal, although Marcel secretly quite liked the idea of being a narwhal. In a way, they were the secret unicorn kings of the sea, and there was something about that that appealed. Narwhals weren't forced to learn the entire history of boy bands in the space of two weeks, either, which was another point in their favor. 

Being a narwhal definitely appealed now, anyway, when he was twelve hours from getting fired, and it turned out moving to the west coast had been approximately the worst idea he'd ever had. 

He barely noticed Veronica arriving until she'd sat down on the floor next to him, two paper coffee shop cups balanced neatly in a cardboard tray in one hand. She stretched out her legs and toed off her shoes before handing him one of the cups. "Tea," she said. "Just the way you like it."

Marcel made a miserable attempt at smiling his thanks. "I'm in the wrong job," he said glumly, taking a sip of his drink. Veronica had been providing him with perfectly made cups of tea since his first morning in the job, despite him never actually telling her that a) that was how he took it, and b) that he preferred tea over coffee on ninety-seven per cent of hot drink related occasions. In return, he snuck into her office before she arrived every morning, and left her one of his homemade muffins on her desk, wrapped in a napkin. He always wrote, _GOOD MORNING! ENJOY!_ in the corner of the napkin, but he disguised his writing so that she wouldn't know it was him. 

He liked doing little things like that to make Veronica smile. She really did have the loveliest smile; it made her eyes light up, and Marcel liked it the best when Veronica looked happy. Not that she had to smile just because he liked it, of course. Marcel's sister Jennifer had just finished a masters in Feminist Theory, and as a result Marcel was always very careful to remember that women had agency in their own right. Still, he liked it when he got to make people happy, and if sneaking Veronica muffins every morning worked to do just that, then Marcel was happy too. 

Veronica carefully took the lid off her cup, and tore the corner off two sugar packets before tipping them into her cappuccino. "I don't think so," she said. Veronica always had cappuccinos. She was a creature of habit—of _exclusive_ habit—but a creature of habit nonetheless. She'd told him that the very first day he'd started with the firm, arriving first thing in the morning to perch on his desk and introduce herself. She'd taken him to the coffee shop on the corner and had pointed out the especially good cakes and pastries. "I think we pitched for the wrong contract. I told Johnny and Harvey we shouldn't go for a music video, but they always think they know best. You're good at what you do. We're good at what we do. We should just stick with that. We know commercials inside and out."

"Maybe." Personally, he wasn't all that sure that a career that focused mainly on forging a close personal relationship between women and yogurt was exactly what he'd been dreaming of all these years. He'd worked so hard on this pitch. He hadn't known anything about pop music two weeks ago; to be fair, he'd barely known anything about music, full stop. He had a record player he'd brought with him all the way from the east coast, but the contents of his record collection were mostly old jazz—which rattled out creakily and made him wish he was alive sometime other than now—and some old fifties records that had been his grandmother's: Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole. His only contribution to his collection had been Buddy Holly and Bill Haley, but even Bill Haley felt a little too modern for his liking. None of it added up to knowing anything about One Direction. He'd watched some of their interviews on his phone this afternoon; if he'd spent more time doing that over the last couple of weeks instead of listening to Johnny and Harvey, who'd wanted to cash in on all the reasons boy bands were popular, maybe he wouldn't be sitting on his office floor way after office hours, making mental notes of all the places the janitorial staff were failing to vacuum. There were dust bunnies underneath his drawers. "I thought everyone had gone home. It's late, Veronica."

Veronica brushed her hair back over her shoulder with one hand, so it trailed down her back. Marcel had to Brylcreem the life out of his hair so it didn't spring out all around his head like a curly halo; Veronica's always looked so shiny. She always held herself so tall at work, professional and organized and in control, but she was more relaxed now, her shoulders looser, her smile easier. It gave Marcel a little thrill to know that she felt she could unwind a little in his presence. "I've been organizing the clean-up for tomorrow, and giving everyone the morning off because it'll be easier to get everything fixed up right if there's no one here. The usual."

"Do you even have the authority to do that?" Marcel couldn't help but wonder at Veronica; he wasn't entirely sure that anyone had ever formally given her any of the power she wielded over everyone who worked here. Technically she was Johnny and Harvey's executive assistant, but Marcel was half-convinced that secretly she did most of their jobs, too. If one day the firm fell and Veronica emerged as the new CEO, Marcel wouldn't be in the least surprised. It would be harder to sneak her breakfast muffins every day, but he suspected he'd find a way. 

"If anyone has a better idea for how to deal with today, then they're welcome to come and find me," Veronica said, pointing her toes. She bent down so she could massage her instep. "These shoes pinch like you wouldn't believe."

"I can believe," Marcel said. He really didn't have a clue why Veronica had picked him over everyone else that worked here to be nice to. Veronica ran this place, and everyone knew that, but she didn't exactly have a lot of friends. She was always so aloof and distant and efficient and busy, except for the times she sneaked into Marcel's office and brought him tea. "They're going to fire me, aren't they? Johnny and Harvey. For today. I might as well just pack my stuff up right now."

"Nah," Veronica bumped her foot into Marcel's. "You've just got to know how to play them. They've got their marshmallow side. You've just gotta find it. Anyway, this was their mistake more than anyone else's. A boy band. I literally have no idea what they thought we were going to do with them."

Marcel wasn't convinced. He'd worked so hard on his designs, but they'd all been wrong, and now on top of all that, they were all destroyed. He hated getting things wrong. "Not much call for taking pictures of a boy band smiling at salad," he said, trying to make a joke of it. 

"Guess not," Veronica said, bumping her elbow into his. Whenever Marcel got home at the end of the day, his shirt was always creased and a mess and it looked like he'd spent a million hours in it; even at the end of a day as stressful as today, Veronica looked like she'd just slipped into hers. He'd always been envious of people who looked beautifully put together. Marcel had broken his glasses two days after moving here and still hadn't found the time to go to the eye doctor to get them fixed. "Hey, do you want to go and get a drink? Let's just call it a day and have a drink."

"With me?" Marcel had been living out here for close on two months now, but he'd never once gone to a bar here, not with anyone. When he'd been packing up to move out here, he'd imagined that he'd be doing all of those kinds of things with Nic, but apparently, _oh, Marcel, if only you were moving out to LA too, we could have gone out, had some fun, just the two of us_ was just something you said to get annoying people out of your hair, and not an invitation. 

Marcel knew the difference now, but he hadn't known it two months ago. Hadn't been his finest moment. 

"There isn't anyone else here other than us, is there?" Veronica smiled at him. "Leave this until tomorrow. Let's just call it a day. I'm sick of the sight of this place."

"Okay, then," Marcel said. He'd always had friends back in DC. Lots of people there didn't listen to pop music and liked reading old books. He hadn't found those people in LA yet. 

"Great," Veronica said. "I have to powder my nose, so I'll see you by the elevators in ten?"

Marcel nodded, still a little dazed by how the day had gone to properly take in that Veronica seemed to want to hang with him outside of the office. It's only as he watched her walk down the hallway, heels in hand, that he realized he was supposed to be moving too, and clambered to his feet. 

~*~

The place Veronica wanted to take them to was apparently only ten minutes from the office, which necessitated taking Veronica's car to get there. When she enquired after his car, Marcel had to explain that yes, he was probably the only person in LA relying on public transportation to get himself around. He knew he had to buy himself a car at some point, but he'd been working so hard in the office that he'd hardly had any time to shop. 

"You should make time," she told him, glancing at him over the top of her iPod, plugged into the speakers and playing Frank Ocean. Marcel had no idea who that was, but it sounded okay, at least. "Don't let this job take you over. It's not worth it." At the stop sign, she leaned over and poked a finger into Marcel's thigh. "Don't lose you in all of this. You're good just as you are."

He blushed at that, unable to help himself, and when they pulled up at the restaurant he climbed awkwardly out of the car as she handed the keys over to the valet parking guy, and followed her inside. The restaurant—at first, Marcel had assumed that they were just going to a bar, but Veronica had put him right on that—was tiny and exclusive. A day like today needed food, apparently, and Marcel wasn't going to argue because the contents of his cupboards at the moment were basically muffin ingredients, ramen, and spaghetti noodles. He needed to make time to shop for groceries at some point too.

He needed to make time for a lot of things, apparently. 

The doorman knew Veronica by name, and then she said _hi_ to the maitre'd as well, and Marcel was left wondering if Veronica knew everyone in LA, especially when they were led through the tables to a tiny booth at the back, quiet and exclusive. 

"The number of times I've booked Johnny and Harvey in here," Veronica confided as they sat down. She tucked her long legs under the table. "I get an executive assistant discount."

"That's a thing?"

"It is here," Veronica told him, passing him a menu. "I try not to ream them out if shit goes wrong, and Johnny and Harvey's bills are large, and regular, so very occasionally I take advantage of our good relationship and bring a friend for dinner."

Marcel felt warm, right down in his stomach. _A friend_. "Thank you," he said, as politely as he could manage.

She smirked at him a bit at that. He liked the way she smiled. He ducked his head down to concentrate on his menu, butterflies in his stomach. Getting rid of the butterflies wasn't made any easier by the fact that the menu was almost entirely in French, and while Marcel could speak Spanish passably, French was definitely beyond him. He was fairly convinced of _bonjour_ and _baguette_ , but he wasn't that sure that either of those were going to help him pick something to eat. 

"Chicken or fish?" Veronica asked finally, and Marcel blushed. He'd tried to look like he was just engrossed in the menu, but obviously his inability to understand any kind of French was just shining out of him like a beacon of terribleness. 

"Is it that obvious?" he asked. "Chicken."

She pointed half way down the menu. "There. Chicken parmesan, essentially. You should see Johnny and Harvey when they come, honestly. They just get the waiter over and ask for things in English and hope they exist on the menu. Well, without the hope, really. They will them into existence with the size of their bank balance."

"Must be nice," Marcel said, who mostly had to will his bank balance into existence, let alone items on expensive French menus. 

"Must be," Veronica agreed, and when the waiter came over, she asked him if he preferred red or white, and then ordered a bottle of wine. 

Marcel wasn't that good at getting drunk. Well, he wasn't all that good at a lot of things, and liquor was way up that list. The getting drunk part was easy; holding his liquor wasn't, and it barely took him a glass to start revealing secrets. 

_And_ he went a nice shade of pink. It was embarrassing, really, although Veronica seemed more amused than anything else, especially when Marcel launched into a story about the girl he was in love with in high school, who'd had hair like Veronica's, but who'd never loved him back. 

"Definitely her loss, then," Veronica said, bright-eyed, as their main course arrived. 

"Don't know about that," Marcel said. "Think I'm just bad at people." And then he told Veronica all about the boy at college with skin the same soft, coffee tone as Veronica's, who'd let Marcel blow him, but who'd given Marcel a fake number afterwards.

Marcel had never, ever told anyone that story before. 

"That was definitely his loss," Veronica said, leaning in to hold her fork out towards him. "Try this."

Marcel ducked in to messily try some of her salmon. "Delicious," he said, blushing even harder. "Don't you mind? About the boy?"

"No," Veronica said. "It's not just boys, is it? That you like?"

"No," Marcel said. "It's both. I haven't ever told anyone that before."

"Well," Veronica said. "Thank you. For trusting me."

Marcel ducked his head. It hadn't really been trust; it had been the red wine. He'd been drunk before, though, and he'd never told anyone else. 

Maybe it was trust, too. 

"How did you like Leeroy?" Veronica asked after that, curling her toes around Marcel's ankle. She'd lost the shoes again, and her toes made Marcel shiver. It had been Veronica who'd brought Leeroy in, after Johnny and Harvey had demanded full-on choreography as part of their pitch, and Marcel had thought sadly about the job he'd left behind him, the one he'd been good at, the one he'd quit to follow a girl who didn't even want him half way across the country.

"He worked really hard," Marcel said, concentrating on swirling his red wine around his glass. "He had all these ideas and he worked really hard on them. They were just what Johnny and Harvey asked him for." He looked down at the table. "Did you see him, after? I didn't think to go and see if he was all right."

"I swear, we're sticking to commercials after today. It's morally bankrupt, but at least nobody ends up hiding under a desk after office hours."

"I wasn't hiding under a desk," Marcel said, blushing even more.

"I was," Veronica said, getting her iPad out of her bag. She tapped away at the screen for a minute. "Destroying my office, I have no idea what they thought they were doing. I'm billing their record company, the little bastards. There. I've emailed you Leeroy's contact details. You can ask him yourself."

Marcel had had too much red wine to try and navigate his way through that. He must look bewildered, but Veronica just smiled at him over the table. 

"You're a lot alike, you two," she said. "You're both so focused and dedicated. And he doesn't have many friends here. You'd be good for each other."

Marcel hadn't spent that much time with Leeroy, although, thinking about it, that had mostly because Marcel had been caught up watching old Backstreet Boys videos instead of paying attention to Leeroy bounding into his office at odd hours of the day. He'd barely had time to do more than acknowledge the cups of tea that Leeroy would leave on his desk every now and again, let alone listen to all the hundreds of ideas that Leeroy had about how to modernize the idealized boy band, in line with Johnny and Harvey's directives. 

Looking back, Marcel suspected that he should be blaming Veronica for the cups of tea. There was an odd sort of gleam in her eyes that suggested he should have picked up on this earlier. 

"I hate failing," Marcel said again, since he hadn't mentioned that recently. He dropped his chin down onto his clasped hands, and watched Veronica finish off her tiny peppermint chocolate pot. 

"You and me both." Veronica held out her spoon for Marcel to lean in and taste her dessert; it was delicious. Under the table, she was still stroking Marcel's ankle with her toes. 

"You're really nice," he said, before he really had a chance to think about it. 

She blushed. Marcel had never seen her blush. "Thanks," she said, voice a little higher than normal. 

"Why'd you even talk to me?" Marcel asked. "Out of everyone?" He was so sure that Veronica could talk to anyone she wanted. She was so organized and so beautiful and so competent. Marcel was just—well. He was Marcel. 

"Because you work hard and you seemed honest," she said, without stopping to think. "Everyone's fake here. You're not."

"Wouldn't know how to be," he mumbled, a bit embarrassed. "I only know how to be me. I've tried not to be so—" He waved a hand at himself. "I can't."

"That's what I like about you," Veronica told him. She held out her spoon again, and Marcel darted in a little jerkily to lick off the chocolate. "It's why I think you'll like Leeroy, if you give him a chance too."

"It sounds like you're trying to set us up." Marcel tried to laugh, but Veronica's toes kept brushing against his ankle, and he was ticklish. And it was hot.

"If I was?" Veronica asked, still bumping her toes into Marcel's foot. "Would you mind?"

"Only if it meant I didn't get to kiss you," Marcel said, a little boldly even by his tastes. 

"I think that could be arranged," Veronica said, and she smiled at him, leaning in. "Do you want to come back to my place?"

"Um," Marcel said. He blushed bright red. "Yes?"

"Okay, then," Veronica said, and held her hand up. "I'll get the check."

~*~

Veronica's apartment was high up in the sky, smaller than Marcel would have imagined, but with a view that stretched on over Los Angeles, endless and bright and loud. She had shelves full of comic books, and a whole wall of art that she did herself. He stood in front of it, entranced, one hand to her art desk, a sloping table that was propped full of half-finished drawings and some inked ones, too. It was amazing, her work, jagged round the edges, brightly colored, but up close, intricate and detailed. 

"You like it?" she asked, a little hesitantly. He'd never heard her be hesitant before. 

"I love it," Marcel said, and he stared at a pen and ink drawing of an old fashioned gramophone, words spilling out of the horn in Arabic and English. He traced the shape in the air in front of it. "Why didn't you tell me you could do this?"

"Same reason you don't tell people you write poetry and play the flute," Veronica said, unbuttoning the top of her shirt. He can see the pale blue lace of her bra. His mouth went dry. 

"How'd you know about that?" he asked. 

"Research," Veronica said, biting her lip. She undid another button of her shirt. He bra was peeking out in the open V of the shirt, pale blue and cotton; pretty and plain. "I always research." 

Marcel traced the outline of the superhero hovering over the gramophone, a vision in pale blue Lycra. "What's her super-power?" he asked, nodding towards her art wall. He knew he was blushing. 

Veronica leaned over and covered his hand with hers. She wore a simple silver band on her middle finger. "Invisibility," she said, softly, leaning in to ghost her mouth over Marcel's jaw. 

"Invisibility is power," Marcel said, desperately hoping his voice wasn't shaking. If he tilted his chin up, just a little, he could turn just a little to the side and touch his mouth to hers. 

"It is," she said, and he could feel her breath against his skin. "Us invisibles have to stick together."

Marcel hissed in a breath at that. "Veronica—"

"You and me, and Leeroy too, if you want. I think you and him could be pretty together. Real pretty."

"Gosh." Marcel couldn't think. "Veronica."

"Kiss me," she said, and Marcel curled a hand into her hair, so soft beneath his touch, and she tilted her chin up to meet his. He touched his mouth to hers, trembling a little as she slid a hand up to cup Marcel's face in her hand. He kissed her again, then, a little less tentative this time, fingertips stroking at her hair. 

"Veronica."

"Don't think I don't know that you've been leaving me those muffins every morning," she said, looking fierce all of a sudden. "Don't think that I don't know that."

Marcel blushed. "There wasn't a label," he said, because he hadn't left a name with the little muffins he'd started to leave on her desk every morning when he came in. He just hadn't known how to say thank you for the cups of tea and the friendly smiles. He could bake, though. His dad had taught him well. 

"No one else would have done that for me," Veronica said. "Everyone wants something from me."

"I just thought you might be too busy to get breakfast," Marcel said, trying not to blush too hard. "Or that you might like a mid-morning snack. I like to have something just there, you know? Because I don't have time to take a break, sometimes."

"Did you really bake them yourself? I always wanted to ask."

Marcel shrugged. "Yeah," he said. "I can bake. In my old job we had bake sales. We all used to bring stuff. I don't think that would work here."

"No," Veronica agreed. "Will you show me, sometime? How to make them?"

"Sure," Marcel said. "I can show you now, if you'd like? If you haven't got everything we need, we could go to the store—"

Veronica stopped him with a hand to his wrist. "No," she said, with a smile. "Right now I just want to take you to bed."

"Because of the muffins?" Marcel was puzzled. 

"Because you're you," Veronica said, laughing this time. "Because you're lovely. Because you're a trier and you work really hard. Because you're hot."

"You're hot, you mean," Marcel said, a little stupidly.

She really did laugh at that. "Come on," she said, and taking his hand, she led him down the hall towards the bedroom, and her bed.


End file.
